


One Up

by Maldoror_Chant



Category: One Piece
Genre: CP9 - Freeform, Gen, Humor, Post Enies Lobby arc, These two things should not mix yet they do, Violence mentioned in passing and treated way too lightly by the people involved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 17:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13862424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: We've all done it: hanging around with friends and colleagues after hours in a bar, swapping hard luck stories. When CP9 is involved, the stories tend to get somewhat bloodier as a rule, but the gist is still the same: Who has the best story, and who is going to pick up the tab.





	One Up

"After that, the crime scene was such a balls-up I had to pretend the target had been attacked by bleeding _wolves_ to make it look like a 'natural death' as per orders - attacked by bleeding wolves right in the middle of a goddamn _city_. And on top of all that, the only exit route left was the fucking sewers, with the Duke's men hounding me the whole way. At least I got away without any local yokel ID-ing me, but that was still the biggest mission cock-up of all mission cock-ups, ever," declared Jyabura with an arrogant snort. "Top that, bastards." Then he took a long swig that reached all the way to the bottom of his pint jug. The scent of sake tickled Lucci's nose, like flat jasmine tea baked in alcohol. 

Kaku laughed appreciatively, but the gleam in his eyes beneath the cap said he could trump that.

"Mine was back on Water 7, during the first year we were undercover there. I was going to break into Iceburg's safe - the obvious one he had in his office, we didn't learn about the one under the carpet until much later, more's the pity. I made sure his chief foreman had stepped out. It wasn't Paulie at that time, it was that cranky bastard Culbert, remember him, Lucci? He'd left for the day after putting in his usual twenty hours, but then he must have remembered something or other he'd forgotten to do and came right back in. He was in his office and caught a glimpse of me as I climbed up to Iceburg's window."

"It couldn't have been that bad," Jyabura immediately objected, "since you didn't blow your cover-"

"No, wait. I heard him charge through one office door so I ran out the other. He couldn't have recognized me in the middle of a moonless night, but he knew somebody had been there. I decided I had to let him catch me _with_ a good excuse for being there so he didn't get the wind up Iceburg with talk of 'mystery burglars' - and right as I was reaching that conclusion, I barged into the document room where Kalifa was doing some late-night filing. The plan was obvious, right?"

"Oh damn," Jyabura muttered through his fingers, eyes bright with cruel humor.

"You got it. I only had the time to spin her around into a passionate clench with a quick "Kiss me now-" before the door opened...and instead of witnessing an illicit make-out session between two young employees, old Culbert saw me get spin-kicked clean through a wall."

The two idiots laughed. Lucci kept his expression neutral. Cutting words hovered in his mind, and well-deserved, but that would run counter to the game he'd accepted to play by his very presence, even if it had no name and no defined rules.

"What did Cube-guy say?!"

"Who the hell knows, I was down in rubble up to my ears and Kalifa was giving me the lecture while kicking my ribs in."

"Hah!"

"Of course she caught on pretty fast. But after that we had no choice but to cut Culbert's throat, dump him in the canal and arrange one hell of a messy accident to explain it all," Kaku finished with a pull at his beer.

"Okay. I don't think it's quite as FUBAR as my wolves, but you get extra points for involving the harpy. You, Lucci? Got anything to top that?"

Does the whole Water 7 fiasco count? thought Lucci darkly, but that would have been the wrong move. The essence of this game was to score points by not only losing, so to speak, but losing spectacularly and humorously. Lucci had only ever lost once, and though witnesses affirmed it had been spectacular, it was about as far from humorous as you could get. So Lucci leaned back and clicked his fingers for the waiter to bring out another round on his tab. This evening was going to cost him; these two cackling idiots were drinking like they were trying to drown the ocean.

It was the price of hubris. Lucci had already paid it once on the Bridge of Hesitation. He should have known better after that bitter lesson. Never - Underestimate - _Anyone_. If he'd learned one thing on that thrice-damned span of stone, he should have learned that. Kaku and Jyabura had certainly learned something from their own losses, something that Lucci would never have guessed those two strong-headed agents might master: cooperation. Lucci didn't know the ins and outs of what had transpired, but apparently his two co-workers had failed to work together in the Tower of Justice while facing the Straw Hats, and fumbled some momentous opportunity as a result. Lucci didn't want to know the details as he would probably have to hurt the two cretins if he ever found out. He had his own concerns, working to heal himself and train to an ever-higher level in brooding solitude. It'd been a welcome distraction when his two colleagues had popped up out of nowhere and challenged him to a match. Two on one, but hey, this was Lucci, right? Mr. 4000 Douriki. 

Lucci had accepted with the only stipulation that they not come crying to him when they got hurt. Hubris...

He would never admit it out loud, but it had been oddly impressive. CP9 agents weren't cooperative by nature, they tended to fight solo and rely only on themselves. The combined feint-attacks must have required unusual work and dedication. Lucci had tried brute force, and when that failed he'd fallen back on the tried-and-tested 'divide and conquer'. It'd been close; Jyabura was favouring his left shoulder and Kaku had an impressive shiner under the shadow of his cap, but when it came to winning and losing, such things were immaterial. 

"You lost, pussycat," Jyabura had said, triumphant but not crushingly so. When Kaku offered Lucci a hand up from the dirt and added, "That means you owe us...a round at the bar," Lucci had realized that this new team spirit might extend to him too. He wasn't sure he liked this. Teamwork, helping each other out, relying on one's friends...that was the sort of nonsense spouted by the Straw Hats. Then again, those same pirates had strolled right through Enies Lobby like they were on a picnic and CP9 were only the uninvited wasps. Lucci had pride, certainly, but it lay primarily in his abilities to fight and kill, and today, tomorrow and the day after and until he could beat them, this pair of fighting fools were going to be one hell of a good workout. Lucci needed a challenge at his level, he wanted to get stronger for his job, his duty, his mission in life, and for good old-fashioned revenge as well. 

So he'd accepted Kaku's hand up and grunted, "Only if you and the mutt drink out of the same glass, in the spirit of two on one." It was a concession those lugheads might even be said to have earned...

And that was how the three of them (along with a mildly drunken Hattori, hiccupping on Lucci's shoulder) had ended up at one in the morning in this bar they'd emptied through intimidation, deep in the rebuilt Tower of Justice, playing a game which Lucci was probably going to lose too. 

As a professional infiltrator, Lucci had a good grasp of human interaction in the same way an entomologist had a good grasp of bugs. He cared not a whit about the roles he had to play, but he executed them to the best of his abilities because that would get him close to his target. That was all that mattered to Lucci in life: justice and blood. To be precise, his justice, and other people's blood. 

So he knew every finesse of this game and what sort of invention he could spin out of thin air if this was a drunken evening with Galley-la workers or any other mark he wished to impress, but that wouldn't work here and now. These two men knew what was under the mask, and though he might be able to slip an exaggeration past them, they would surely catch an out-and-out lie. In this game, he actually had to be honest and truthful. _And_ he had to make it funny. A challenge. Lucci bore with it, telling himself this was good training for _some_ bizarre future mission or other. He'd do more than bear with it. Time to even the score. Losing gracefully, or indeed at all, was not a habit Lucci intended to pick up under any circumstance. He just needed an easy pitch, one for which he'd have a good shot-

"Okay, my turn," Kaku mused, smiling dreamily up at the ceiling. "Let's hear the most embarrassing cover story we've had to adopt."

Lucci's glass paused near his lips. Kaku had just handed him his wish on a platter. He fixed an unblinking stare at his co-worker of eight years, wondering how the long-nosed machiavel could have gotten his hands on the details of this particular mission...assuming Kaku's choice of one-ups wasn't simply a coincidence.

"Mine's easy," Kaku continued, reaching for the next beer-and-shot the waiter had put down at his elbow before discreetly disappearing. "Two years before that Water 7 thing. You remember that one, Lucci? You actually burst out laughing when you came to see me off."

"This is gonna be good," muttered Jyabura with an arch glance at his eternal rival (in Jyabura's head at least; as far as Lucci was concerned, it was a rivalry of a few minutes, if that).

"If it's the cruise mission you're talking about, yes, I have to admit that was pretty amusing," Lucci murmured into his whiskey.

"It was on this party boat for spoiled rich men sailing between Mariejoie and Isla Bella. A rather eccentric party boat. I spent the entire mission dressed in drag as part of the entertainment."

Jyabura nearly choked on his liquor. "You are shitting me."

"That's what I told myself every time I caught a glimpse in the mirror."

"But- dude, let's be straight here, Kaku, you would make one butt-ugly girl."

"I did," said Kaku dryly, "but that wasn't the point. I was there for the laughs, the joke of the party."

The wolf Zoan joined his hands together in a gesture of supplication. "Tell me someone, somewhere, has pictures."

"If they do, they're dead." 

Jyabura laughed like a horse with whooping cough.

...It occurred to Lucci that there was an underlying truth to all these war stories, however cringeworthy. The stupidest set of orders, the biggest intel foul-up, the coldest or hottest place they'd been sent to, the most screwed-up mission, and now the most humiliating undercover story...They all said something about the three killers sitting at this table. That they'd do anything for the mission, _anything_ , and that they would pick themselves up in the worst circumstances and go on fighting. It was a testament to their strength, their resilience and their dedication.

Or maybe it was just living proof that misery loves company while drowning itself in a sea of alcohol, on Lucci's tab for the most part. Yes, that might be what it boiled down to.

"- the bastard had gone and felt me up. Turns out he was so myopic he couldn't make me out if it wasn't for the shine of sequins. He thought I was one of the hostesses. He nearly had a heart attack when he realized there was a little more to me than that, at least under the dress."

Jyabura was wheezing and making 'hold it' gestures. "Okay, okay, fine, that's a good one," he conceded when he got his breath back. He was well on the way to totally drunk. "But wait for this. Okay, while you guys were suntanning yourselves in a shipyard on Water 7, I had to infiltrate Bowness Academy to find the son of some revolutionary they'd hidden among the heirs of Mariejoie's crust, bold as brass. Spandam wanted the kid as bargaining chip. I just wanted the fuck out of there. The only open spot on the teacher's roster that year was in kindergarten."

Even Lucci had to let out a snort. 

"Owwwwww." Kaku's smirk belied his apparent commiseration. But that was all part of the game.

"A whole dozen...of four year old...brats," said Jyabura, encasing each statement in its own brief silence to let his audience fully appreciate their impact. "In the first ten _minutes_ inside that classroom, two of them had already pulled my mustache and I wasn't allowed to kill them, or even raise my goddamn voice. I swear - stop laughing you bastards-" but he didn't mean that, laughter was the score chips in this game, "- I swear, I have an ulcer right here and it's called 'Bowness Academy Room 4F'. One kid kicked me in the shins, I turned on him and he peed himself, and then I had to-"

The story wound down, so did the laughter, and Lucci got a challenging look. "Top that, pussycat. I guess you have that whole pigeon-ventriloquist thing from Water 7." Hattori rousted himself at the sarcastic sneer directed at him. "I grant you that that was mildly ego-puncturing, but I-"

"Maybe he's got better," said Kaku, and butter wouldn't melt in that mouth. But then again that was his greatest cover, the enthusiastic, wide-eyed innocent act, and if Lucci had any proof that Kaku had dug up that casino story and was aiming specifically for it, Lucci would spend the next two-on-one sparring session kicking that lanky rear end, even if it meant giving Jyabura as many pot shots as he cared to take. 

A sip of whiskey gave his public the time to hush in anticipation, and also gave Lucci a second to resign himself, and remember that any sign of reluctance or anything other than cool self-directed irony would only compound the ignominy and lose him the game.

"Back when you two were still in the academy, losing to the practice dummies, I had to work in one of those casinos where over-aged noblewomen go to have a flutter on cards and roulette while they waste away. One of them was spending her money on the revolution, as it turned out, and I had to pinpoint which one and remove her. My cover was to sing onstage, those stupid ballads popular at the time. Fortunately it only lasted a-"

"You were a crooner in a casino full of rich dames?" Jyabura's voice was weak, possibly because his jaw was flapping near his breastbone.

"In short, yes." 

"My god..." Kaku had every appearance of being just as stunned as Jyabura (but then again, he really _was_ an excellent actor). "Those old biddies must have been a hair's breadth from rioting every time you stepped onstage."

And the pair of suicidal twits dissolved into laughter. Lucci looked at them acidly, reigning in the desire to punch them both. 

Kaku and Jyabura raised their hands at the same time to order the next round. Some inebriated arguing followed over which of them should concede this one. Lucci soothed Hattori's ruffled feathers as he idly thought up the next topic. 

"Don't worry," he whispered to the bird, too quietly to be heard over the drunken row. "The tables will turn in a few hours."

"Cooo?"

"I've been buying most of the rounds up till now. They've been doing most of the drinking. Neither of them have our head for alcohol. I think we'll have another sparring session soon. Say, tomorrow morning at dawn."

Hattori chuckled rustily in his ear. There wasn't a game yet invented that didn't have ways of cheating for a CP9 agent worth his salt.


End file.
